Got A Question?

Warning: Missing argument 2 for WC_Template_Loader::unsupported_theme_title_filter() in /home/alexan73/wrexhamglyndwrrotary.org/wp-content/plugins/woocommerce/includes/class-wc-template-loader.php on line 380
Blog

Hi! My name’s Sophie and I’m a 22-year-old honorary Rotarian of Rotary Wrexham Glyndwr. Last year I was coming up to the end of my second year of university at the University of South Wales in Cardiff. I got thinking about how I wanted to make the most of my last year in Cardiff so I decided to make a bucket list. The list contains some small menial things such as ‘having a cup of coffee at a coffee shop I’d always walked past but never been to’ and ‘seeing a show at the local theatre’. Some of the things on my list were even a bit silly like ‘have a go on the carousel in the centre of Cardiff’. However, I also wanted to challenge myself so I decided to add ‘complete a half marathon’ to the list. I knew this would be no easy task, I have done several charity runs in the past but most of them have only been 6 kilometres. The half marathon will be 3.5 times longer than that.

When I came back to university in September 2016 I looked into half marathons in my area and decided to sign up for the Newport Half Marathon on March 5th 2017. If I was going to do this I knew I wanted to raise some money for a worthy cause.

In July 2016, my future mother in law, Fiona Bassett, founder of Rotary Wrexham Glyndwr, the newest Rotary Club in our area, had a vision of making it a new and exciting club for everyone which did things a little bit differently. With her mother, Molly Youd, being the District Governor of Rotary International District 1180 and step-dad, Reg Youd, being a long serving member of Rotary the new club would have lots of support. My fiancé Sam (Molly & Reg’s grandson and Fiona’s son) became one of the founding members of the new club and instantly showed a keen interest in being involved, especially in organising fundraising events. I could see what a positive effect Rotary was having on him, he was becoming more focused and driven and found something he was passionate about. Sam suggested that I join Rotary and at first I was slightly reluctant as I was worried I would be unable to commit adequate time into Rotary as I was away at university. At this stage I had already helped out with Rotary at a fun day fundraiser and also made the promotional video for the Rotary International District 1180 Conference 2016 as I am a media production student, so president Fiona suggested that I could be an honorary member. I was very proud to be asked an of course accepted. Now that I was a Rotarian and had already seen all the work that Sam had done for Rotary, I wanted to give some input. I remembered that back in April I had put ‘run a half marathon’ on my bucket list and thought what better way to contribute than to run the half marathon to fundraise for Rotary.

I have now started training for the half marathon and I am doing 6 kilometre jogs every day. The training will get harder and longer and more gruelling but it will all be worth it if I can raise some money for such an amazing cause. After attending the Rotary International District 1180 Conference I got to learn about all the amazing work that Rotary does and I would love to be an active Rotarian for life.

We may only be a newly formed club (formed July 2016) but we try to pack a punch where we can, and this has led to us having our 2nd visit from Rotary International in Great Britain & Ireland President Eve Conway next week. She will be accompanied by a camera crew! Needless to say we are all a little bit excited!